Mega Food Park Scheme Current Affairs - 2019

The Maharashtra’s first Mega Food Park named as Satara Mega Food Park Pvt. Ltd. was inaugurated at Degaon Village in Satara district by Minister of Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal. This is overall 12th Mega Food Park operationalized in country so far and 10th operationalized during tenure of present government.

Key Facts

The Mega Food Park will leverage additional investment of about Rs. 250 crores in 25-30 food processing units in park. It will eventually lead to turnover of about Rs. 450-500 crore annually. The park will provide direct and indirect employment to 5,000 persons and benefit about 25,000 farmers in Primary Processing Centers (PPCs) and Collection Centers (CCs) catchment areas.

Mega Food Park Scheme

Ministry of Food Processing Industries is implementing the scheme to give major fillip to food processing sector by adding value and reducing food wastage at each stage of supply chain with particular focus on perishables.

The scheme aims to create modern infrastructure facilities for food processing along value chain from farm to market with strong forward and backward linkages through cluster based approach. Projects under it are merged under comphrehensive flagship scheme of ‘Pradhan Mantri Kisan SAMPADA Yojana’.

Under it, common facilities and enabling infrastructure is created at Central Processing Centre (CPCs) and facilities for primary processing and storage is created near farm in form of PPCs and CCs. For it, Government provides financial assistance upto Rs. 50.00 Crore per Mega Food Park project.

Punjab’s first Mega International Food Park was inaugurated at Dabwala Kalan, in Fazilka District Punjab under the aegis of Mega Food Park Scheme. It was inaugurated by Union Food Processing Industry Harsimrat Kaur Badal in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal.

This food park is constructed on 55 acre land and has additional facilities for processing milk and milk products besides packaging vegetables and fruits.

Initially it will provide employment for more than 700 local youth and later more will be employed in the park once other companies establishes their units in this facility.

Mega Food Park Scheme: This scheme is based on cluster approach and on hub and spoke model. It aims at facilitating the establishment of a strong food processing industry backed by an efficient supply chain, which includes collection centres, central processing center (CPC) and cold chain infrastructure.

This scheme envisages one time capital grant of

50 per cent of the project cost (excluding land cost) subject to a maximum of Rs 50 crore in general areas.

75 per cent of the project cost (excluding land cost) subject to a ceiling of Rs 50 crore, in difficult and hilly areas including north east region and J&K.